Welsh veg in school dinners call by as Torfaen joins scheme
Derek Walker wants all 22 Welsh councils to join the Welsh Veg in Schools project, which aims to increase the supply of locally produced organic vegetables in school meals.
He believes this initiative could be part of a long-term plan to improve Wales' food security and ensure equal access to local, affordable, healthy, and sustainable diets.
Five new councils, Pembrokeshire, Torfaen, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Swansea, and Gwynedd, have signed up to the project, joining seven who signed up last year.
Mr Walker said: "The 50 recommendations in my Future Generations Report will help Welsh Government and those delivering public services to improve lives in Cymru.
"A week after publishing the report, I am already seeing major commitments to my calls and I urge more public bodies to sign up – including the 10 councils who are yet to make a commitment to more vegetables on school children's plates."
The Welsh Veg in Schools project is a pilot initiative coordinated by Food Sense Wales, aiming to get more organically produced Welsh veg into primary school meals across Wales.
Currently, only a quarter of a portion of vegetables per head of the population is being produced in Wales.
The project has the potential to increase the market to help realise this commitment.
Katie Palmer, head of Food Sense Wales, said: "At its heart, Welsh Veg in Schools is about getting sustainably produced, local veg into schools to nourish children via their school meals.
"We aren't producing enough vegetables in Wales and we need to be building our own supply base, bringing benefit to local communities and reducing our reliance on imports through connecting local growers with local wholesalers and fostering relationships that help businesses flourish."
Last week, Food Sense Wales published a report that said around 25 per cent of all vegetables served in schools across Wales could be organic by 2030 with the right planning and investment in infrastructure.
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Wales Online
4 hours ago
- Wales Online
'We were right on 20mph, Brexit was wrong and Nigel Farage would be a disaster for Wales'
'We were right on 20mph, Brexit was wrong and Nigel Farage would be a disaster for Wales' Departing Welsh Government cabinet member Julie James gave her no holds barred take as she prepares to leave frontline politics Julie James meeting school children at Lisvane and Llanishen reservoirs in 2021 (Image: Patrick Olner) When Julie James speaks, people listen, not only in terms of her Senedd contributions, where she is more than happy to put her opponents in their place, but her cabinet colleagues too - especially since First Minister Eluned Morgan made her "minister for delivery" a year ago. It is the sort of title possibly more suited for a spoof sitcom, but it's also the sort of job you can only give someone you know will ruffle feathers if that's what is needed. A member of Labour for almost 52 years, she also holds sway in the political party. She was, after all, one of the resignations on that July day last year that signalled to Vaughan Gething he could not resist any longer, and within hours he had quit as First Minister of Wales. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here . Her official Senedd biog reads: "Julie is a committed green campaigner, environmentalist and a keen swimmer and skier. Julie is a member of Unison and is also a member of Gray's Inn" - a varied mix indeed. She has lived around the world, but moved back to Swansea to raise her three children. Professionally she has worked as a lawyer, been assistant chief executive of Swansea council. Now, the clock on her time in frontline politics is ticking, as she is one of the 13 Labour Senedd members who will not seek re-election in May's election. Article continues below Entering politics was a long held ambition, and she finally did it at 53. Brought up in a political household, her father was a Labour Party councillor and trade unionist and, in her words, both her parents were "both crazy climate change activists". It's probably no surprise she is also a lifelong vegetarian, something she describes as being "very bloody weird" when she was growing up. "I've always very firmly been of the view, right from when I was 16, if you want to change something, you have to stay in it. 'Perseverance is everything' "It's a conversation we have all the time, if you've resigned from the Labour Party in principle, then you can't vote for the candidate or make sure the people who believe what you believe are the ones who represent you. So, well done with your principle, but now you don't have a voice. "I've always thought having a voice is important and I've also thought, perseverance is everything. I'm nothing if not persistent. "Some things take a long time. I've been a member of the campaign for one member, one vote, [an internal Labour party voting system] since I joined, we got that in 2018. Fifty years is a long time to be persistent. You get there in the end. I've always been like that." During the pandemic, Julie James was Mark Drakeford's climate change minister (Image: Patrick Olner) Before standing for election to the Senedd she had what she calls a "perfectly good career". A former environmental regulation lawyer, she admits her time in the cabinet "hasn't worked out as quite the little retirement job I had in mind". But had always wanted to do it, when her predecessor in the Swansea West seat, Andrew Davies, said he was standing down "serendipity" saw her selected, and then elected. But six months after being elected, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She kept working. "What are you going to do if you're not working? Sitting at home looking at the wall wondering if you' that's no good for me at all," she said. She had four operations during her treatment, but once she was better, told Carwyn Jones she was ready to join his cabinet. She is now serving her fourth First Minister, with roles like skills and science, local government all on her CV, but the role created for her by Mark Drakeford, whose leadership election campaign she chaired, is her passion despite some very vocal opponents. In his tenure Mr Drakeford axed the M4 relief roads, placed a ban on new roads, set new targets for recycling and net zero, and who can forget it her department, and her deputy Lee Waters who brought in Wales' 20mph law, for example. Public opinion didn't deter her. "I suppose I always felt we were doing the right thing. You get a lot of crap from people who want you to do something that isn't the right thing. "I put a lot of stock by having done the right thing. So yes, we did things that were unpopular. The 20mph is a classic because it has saved tens of lives. It has stopped thousands of people's lives from being changed across Wales. Everyone in Wales now has at least a 10% drop in their insurance, that's the most successful policy we've ever had and sod it, some people didn't like it I did," she said. 'Sheer hypocrisy' The brief was massive, and her deputy, Lee Waters, has since admitted the toll, fronting that policy took on him personally. She says she tried to persuade him from fighting every battle. "There were some people you can persuade and there are lots of people you can't persuade. Don't try, just stick to your guns quietly, carefully, sluggishly, persistently and you'll get there. You don't have to do the warrior thing but it suits some people. "I'm quite happy to quietly do it in the background." For those who watch Senedd regularly, her contributions are the ones you turn your head to watch. She cannot hold back, particularly when the Conservative opposition speaks. She cannot, she says, bear their "hypocrisy". "The Tories spend a lot of time telling us that we should do things faster, whilst also we should cut all the taxes and we should pump a lot of money into businesses that don't need it, take it away from people who do need it, and at the same time we should have done a lot more on, I don't know, salt marshes or something. "That doesn't add up and it's just the sheer hypocrisy." Julie James MS speaking to Conservative Andrew RT Davies MS during the first day of Welsh Parliament at the Senedd in Cardiff Bay in 2021 (Image: Ben Evans/Huw Evans Agency) "The Tory group in the Senedd does my head in a bit because they backed the UK Government big time. Lots of them backed Liz Truss, lots of them publicly. They backed Brexit and then at the same time they stand up in the Senedd and they shout at us about the fact that austerity is cutting our money, crippling our communities, knackering our health service. Brexit has done our trade in. "I can't bear it." But the threat in 2026 to Labour isn't the Tories, they face their own battle to get any seats, but Labour faces a two pronged attack from Plaid on the left, and Nigel Farage's Reform on the right. She knows the threat Reform brings. "It's the same thing as Brexit, isn't it? We failed on Brexit and we failed on Brexit because we didn't understand that a lot of people, just taking Swansea for an example, a lot of people in Swansea could see the largesse of the European Union, they could see the universities they could see, but they had no share in it. "They can see that some people are doing alright out of it, but they aren't. Many worked, for example, in facilities in the university, for example but they were having their hours and wages cut while they could see in their world other people very well out of it. "If you don't share it out, then obviously the people who aren't getting a share are angry, rightly angry, and that's what's happening across the Western developed world and with Reform. 'Taken down a path' "We have a society that, on the one hand, is getting technologically more competent, wealthier, with nicer lives, longer lives and so on and a huge section of that society is sick and poor and struggling and they're bloody hungry. "They're being taken down a path by demagogues who are doing it for their own purposes, and they're going to make their lives worse. "Brexit is a perfect example of that. Nobody can point me to anything that Brexit has done isn't a disaster and of course, if you put that to some of the people who backed it, they say, 'well, it wasn't done properly'. What an absolute nonsense. Isn't that the same as Reform, what they're promising might, on a very surface level, make some sense." Get daily breaking news updates on your phone by joining our WhatsApp community here . We occasionally treat members to special offers, promotions and ads from us and our partners. See our Privacy Notice She speaks of a Reform pledge to give non-doms a chance to avoid paying some UK taxes, by paying a £250,000 fee, and income from the measure would be transferred annually tax-free to the bank accounts of the lowest paid 10% of full-time workers. "Until you talk to people about it and you say, 'well, actually most non-doms would be paying a great deal more than that, they should be paying 40% of their income all the time, and ask 'Do you know how many people in Wales are on the minimum wage?' Think how much it is to give them £10 each per week, which would have to be the absolute minimum for it to make a difference. "When you do that on the doorstep, some people will listen to that but lots of them won't and they'll say they've had a gutsful of 'you lot'. "Until we can get some trust in mainstream politics we've got a problem. We've had 14 years of people shouting at each other, a lot of misinformation. There's no trust in that, people promising them the 'Big Society' or whatever the hell the Johnson one was. it doesn't mean anything to anyone." But, I put it to her, UK Labour has been as guilty, promising change but delivering it via a series of policies which have been deeply unpopular. "Absolutely," she concedes. "UK Labour have come in and they have made a series of decisions which have undermined trust in mainstream politics. They're new. They have four more years to fix it. They will fix it," she is. "But, Labour here is bearing the brunt of that," she said. As deputy skills minister in 2015 Julie James said she was passionate about women in science (Image: Western Mail) When we met, a poll had not long put Labour's support in Wales for the Senedd election at 18%. That is not, she said, being projected on the doorsteps to such a degree but there shouldn't be a lot of hope taken by Labour by that. "In the 80s we used to have 'shy Tories' where people would swear blind they weren't going to vote for Thatcher and clearly were. And we're getting those but for Reform." Her Swansea patch can, broadly, be split into the northern part of the constituency which is mainly social housing or council homes, and the south, with people who work in the university, the hospital or council. It is a patch which tells the story of the threat to Labour in Wales, quite succinctly with the Reform threat in the north, but the Plaid, Green, Lib Dem threat in the south. "What people might think is, 'we don't need Welsh Labour because they're going to win so I can indulge myself in a protest vote', so I spend a lot of time reminding people what happened in Gower when 1,000 people voted Green and they got a Tory MP for the first time in a hundred years. "I personally rang up quite a lot of people and said, 'how's that working out for you?'" The signs are all there that Labour will have a tough time in the election for which she won't be a candidate. "What we've got to do is give people something positive to vote for. I do not want people to vote Labour because it's the least worst option. We've got to do something that means you actually believe in us, which I think we can do. And secondly, we've got to persuade them that even if they're a bit sceptical about that, swapping to a different party and splitting the progressive vote, will put a Reform government into Wales." One of the many narratives she says she cannot tolerate is about immigration and limiting immigration, particularly in Wales. 'This immigration thing does my head in' "In truth, my own view is that Wales should have its arms wide open and say, 'Come, come, come, come, come in numbers' and if you're young, working age, of breeding age, come. We need those people, we need a lot of them. The more highly skilled, the better. And by highly skilled, I mean skilled in care as well as skilled in technology. "The immigration thing just does my head in. I just don't understand why anyone in Wales is even remotely worried about immigration. It's tiny and the immigrants who come to Wales have hugely enriched our society. "Without the Ukrainians where would our care system be?" She is one of those who has seen a new, upstart party come into Welsh politics. In 2016, she saw the Ukip contingent arrive in the Senedd and admits the challenge posed by a new, inexperienced party, was probably good for the institution - in some ways. "For the first time in ages we had to argue from first principles why we were doing what we did," she said. "We didn't have a broad consensus that we could build from. We had people saying that they fundamentally didn't agree with it and I think that's actually quite a decent discipline to have to do". But she saw the weaknesses too. As the group splintered, they did not pull their weight on committees, she says. "They were really disruptive and not because they had an ideology we didn't like but because they were chaotic. "Actually an enormous amount of the work of the Senedd, like any Parliament goes on in the committee rooms behind closed doors and it's long and boring and tedious and very important indeed. On a visit to Coleg Gwent as deputy skills minister in 2016 (Image: Coleg Gwent) "You have to spend hours and hours going through long, awful documents and acts and they didn't show up and the Senedd is tiny so the burden on everybody else is high." She has seen the government machine, first hand for years, what, I ask her, would it mean for the government - away from the political people - if a party like Reform took over. "There's some danger anyway because there's a lot of us leaving," she said. "Even if Labour had its normal share in the polls and whatever, we'd have a lot of new faces coming in." There is work in the government buildings preparing for a new administration, about providing advice and briefings. "You want a government that's got the right information in front of it and so on." But they have also, she said, been putting measures in place so laws cannot be rowed back on easily. "We've been trying to embed a lot of things. We'll make them harder to get rid of, if I'm absolutely honest. I spend a lot of time working through legislation, making sure it's been implemented, and it would have to actually have primary legislation to repeal it so it would be much harder to just turn the ship back the other way. "In the end, we can't prevent them from doing that, but we can make it harder. "I think a Reform government would be a disaster. If they were to do any of the things they're saying, and who knows whether they would, because their policy platform is fluid, at the moment. They're saying that they would abolish the NHS and replace it with an insurance based system. That's pretty disastrous for an old, poor, sick country like Wales, where most people have a pre-existing condition, probably couldn't get insurance or afford it or whatever. "They would absolutely, definitely stop free prescriptions, free parking at hospitals. They would stop the nationalisation of the trains and the buses. "You'd go backwards very quickly. I suspect they would, as they have done in some of the councils they've taken control of, try to stop, as they have done in America, the diversity, inclusion and equality programmes. Article continues below "They would afterwards realise what they'd done and try to scramble to put them back. I think they'd starve public services of money. We protect our local authorities. Most people in Wales do not understand how bad the local authority situation in England actually is."
Powys County Times
9 hours ago
- Powys County Times
Mortgage lenders under fire from Mid Wales MP David Chadwick
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Wales Online
11 hours ago
- Wales Online
Council accused of 'throwing money like confetti' to 'gag' staff who leave
Council accused of 'throwing money like confetti' to 'gag' staff who leave Figures show just how much was spent on staff non-disclosure agreements Plaid Cymru's Caerphilly group leader Lindsay Whittle is among the critics of the council's NDA use (Image: Plaid Cymru) A Welsh council has been accused of "gagging" former employees and treating money like 'confetti' after figures showed it spent more than £800,000 last year on staff non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). Caerphilly council signed as many NDAs with staff leaving its employment in 2024/25 as the other four councils in Gwent combined. The council has long had a comparatively high use of NDAs, which over the past five years has cost it more than £2.7million. Critics have questioned the motives, suggesting they could be used to "cover up" issues or "stifle" whistleblowers. Caerphilly council challenged those claims and described the use of NDAs as "common practice" between employers and employees. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter . In 2023/24 the council signed 41 NDAs for a total cost of around £784,000. It signed fewer agreements last year, but a total of 32 NDAs added up to more than £832,000. A Freedom of Information request by the Local Democracy Reporting Service showed that over the past five years Caerphilly has signed 150 NDAs with departing employees – while, elsewhere in the Gwent region, Newport signed 62, Blaenau Gwent signed 40, Torfaen signed 18 and Monmouthshire signed 17. Article continues below Councillor Nigel Dix, who leads Caerphilly council's independent group, called the use of NDAs "absolutely wrong" and said they should be "banned in the public sector". "Somebody leaves their employment and they are gagged, basically," he said. "It smacks of a cover-up and that is unacceptable." Mr Dix also said he was concerned about a lack of democratic oversight, and accused the council of "throwing money around like it's confetti". Concerns were also raised by the council's Plaid Cymru group leader, councillor Lindsay Whittle, who said the council should "explain in detail" its use of NDAs. "The widespread use of the so-called gagging orders worries me," he said. "What type of information is so confidential that former staff have to be gagged from speaking about them? "Are these NDAs being used as a way of covering up matters within the workings of the council which may be in the public interest?" A Caerphilly council spokesman said: "These types of settlements are not 'gagging orders', they are agreements that are common practice and are used by many employers to facilitate a mutual termination between an employer and employee." On the comparative figures, the spokesman said: "Caerphilly is one of the largest councils in Wales. Therefore, you would expect these figures to be higher than other smaller local authorities." However, population comparisons show Caerphilly's use of NDAs is higher than other authorities. The most recent Welsh figures show Newport's population is more than 90% of Caerphilly county's, yet Caerphilly council's use of NDAs is more than double that of Newport in the last five years. "As front-line services have been cut back, paying out such sums to ex-staff shows a complete lack of priorities and principle, and stifles any attempts by staff who want to 'whistle-blow,'" said one Caerphilly resident and taxpayer. "There's a widespread belief that people are being gagged not to spill the beans on some of the council's gaffes." The council spokesman, however, said NDAs "are only used when a robust business case has been completed to demonstrate their requirement and are, by their nature, designed to minimise the financial impact on the council". Article continues below He added: 'We will continue to carefully monitor the use of such agreements going forward.'
